Experiencing the Same Stressful Situations at Work

Are experiencing the same pattern at work and you don’t know why? Does the same thing keep happening over and over again? For example, do you keep changing jobs and yet keep choosing a job where the boss bullies you? Or you are not appreciated? Or a co-worker takes credit for your work? Or the same kind of client that you dislike working with keeps being attracted to you?

If you have tried changing the outside circumstances by changing jobs, and yet the same situation keeps occurring, be willing to look at the possibility that you are the cause of the pattern. One possibility is that you are looking at the world through grey-coloured glasses. You are seeing the negative in the situation instead of the positive, because of what you expect to see. Another possibility is that you don’t realize that something about your behaviour triggers reactions from other people that you didn’t intend. You might not be aware of the signals you are sending out with your body language, tone, and energy. Perhaps there is a lesson that you can learn or a change you can make in yourself, so that you change the pattern.

To look at whether this is a pattern, ask yourself:

When was the first time I felt this way, or experienced a similar situation? What was going on? Who was it with? How did I feel? How did I react?

When was the next time it happened? What happened then? How did I feel and what did I do?

Feel any feelings that come up. Be willing to open up your heart to them, get out of your head, and feel them in your body. Breathe deeply to allow the feelings to be released from your body.

Are you willing to release any anger or resentment you have about what happened? Anger uses up energy that you could be using to create the life you want. “Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves. …Forgive…no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it.” –Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Are you willing to forgive the other people involved in this pattern? Are you willing to forgive yourself? If you need some help with this, look at tools like Radical Forgiveness, Hoponopo’no and EFT.

When you encounter this same situation again, how would you like to react differently? You can’t change other people – you can only change yourself. What are you willing to do differently? Set a plan or intention for yourself, and then put it into practice. When the situation comes up again, observe your reaction to it. Is your heart beating faster? Is part of your body getting tight? Are you feeling angry, embarrassed, or hurt? Instead of reacting in the way you normally do, choose your new words, action or behaviour. Maybe it is to stay calm and walk away. Maybe it is to say, “interesting, let me think about it”. Maybe it is to report the situation or resolve it in a different way than you have tried before.